She had been this way a long time. When she lost her parents, she handled it by not advertising it. It was easier to be strong when no one around her expected her to be anything else. When they lost their mom, she could still go to her dad, but when they lost him, it was only them. And Angelina had had to take on Philly and Aunt Rose, as well as Safire herself. She didn’t need a depressed teenager on her hands along with a two-year-old boy and their aged great-aunt. Safire had helped with them until she went off to college, determined to make it on her own. Yes, she had been quiet a long time.
Only now, she did have man problems. She had someone in her life who was threatening her view of men as play. She wondered why she hadn’t taken men seriously before. When she was young, she didn’t need to. Her parents were there to encourage her to stay focused on her goals, and after they were gone, it took all that she had to do just that and do it on her own. She liked to have fun, but she didn’t need anything more, and more could be complicated. More, as she found, could land you where she’d just been—in a spiral of losses. She knew enough about that.
Come to think of it, more also meant opening up. It meant someone might see you cry over a simple question about jazz. It meant having to talk about all those things that she kept hidden, things that were still easier to cope with hidden. Yes, she was used to being quiet. Safire glanced at Darien. She would have to change that, or she might lose this man over her own silence. She took a breath. She would try.
* * *
Within a week, Safire’s pledge came back to haunt her. It was Wednesday, and after Darien got through at school and at the Heritage Center, he came to pick her up. They were going out for a bit, and then they were coming back to her place, where she would finish cooking for them.
Darien rang her buzzer at quarter after six, explaining that he let his class out a few minutes early. Safire was ready. She had on an indigo cocktail dress that came midway down her thighs and that had two spaghetti straps. She had a sheer bolero cover-up to go over it, and she’d put her hair up. She kept on her black pumps from work and carried her black purse. She wasn’t sure what they were doing—perhaps a café or happy hour. But then, this was Darien. She should have known better.
When she got downstairs, he was there in khaki slacks and a plaid beige-and-blue shirt with a khaki vest over it. He kissed her and walked her to his car.
“Where are we going?” Safire asked.
“There’s a hint on the backseat,” Darien said, smiling.
Safire turned around and found a picnic basket.
“Now, you know I cooked.”
“It’s just snacks. We’re going to Oleta River State Park. I didn’t rent us a pavilion, but I thought we could find a nice place near the beach to have some refreshments and play a game I brought.”
“A game?”
“Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as Truth or Dare.”
Despite Safire’s heels, they found an empty picnic table off the water, and Darien spread their blanket out on top. He’d brought chilled wine and soda, cheese and crackers, grapes and glasses. Darien got all the snacks ready, and poured Safire some wine.
“So, here’s the game.” He took a large deck of cards out of the basket. "Each card has a question, but if you’d like, you can change it to anything you want. Each person gets, say, two passes. After that, you have to answer everything. And you have to tell the truth.”
“Oh, no,” Safire grumbled. Then she sat up. “Okay, I can do this.”
Safire cut the deck.
“Usually, you use dice to see who gets to ask the first question, but I’ll let you go first.”
Safire pulled a card. “Okay, it says, ‘If you had to lose one of your five senses, which would you rather lose, and why?’”
“Is that what you want to ask me? Remember, you can change it.”
“I’ll keep it.”
“Okay, I guess I would rather lose my sense of smell. I guess that affects taste, but in general, I would still be able to see, taste—a bit, touch and hear. Now, for my question.” Darien pulled a card. “This says, ‘If you could have written any movie, which one would it have been, and why?’ But that’s not what I want to know right now.”
“Uh-oh,” Safire said, seeing the glint in Darien’s eyes.
“I want to know how many men you’ve been with and how old you were when you first slept with someone.”
“Okay. How many? Twenty maybe. Twenty-five. Always safe. And how old? I was seventeen the first time.”
“The year your mother died.”
Safire nodded, surprised that Darien remembered.
“Maybe those are related.”
“Hey, don’t psychoanalyze me. Leave that to Lawrence.”
Darien rubbed her thigh. “I just want to understand. That’s all.”
“Okay. My turn. I’m getting the hang of this.” She pulled a card. “It says, ‘Which famous person would you like to be for a day, and why?’ Forget that. I want to know if you’ve ever had a sexual experience with a man—anything, not just the full monty.”
Darien nearly choked on his soda, and Safire laughed.
Darien cleared his throat. “Once, in middle school, with my best friend, but nothing really happened, at least nothing that worked for me. We were fully clothed the whole time. He turned out to be gay.”
“I see,” Safire said and then chuckled.
Darien pulled a card. “‘What animal would you most like to be if you had to spend the rest of your life that way?’ Now,” he said, “what I want to know is why you didn’t tell me anything about your family or about volunteering to teach the reading groups at the Heritage Center or...anything?”
Safire sighed. “I’d rather you ask about whether I’ve ever had a sexual experience with a woman.”
“That’s coming,” Darien said, smiling. “But this is what I want to know now.”
“I don’t know. I guess my family seemed so personal.”
“But we’d been...together.”
“I know, but—I guess I’m not used to opening up with people I date. It doesn’t usually last that long.”
“I know what my next question is.”
“About volunteering. I didn’t want you to think I’d done that to pursue you or be with you?”
“You did that to find out more about teaching kids.”
Safire was surprised once again by what Darien remembered about her. “Yes.”
“And?”
“I still have to see, but I love it so far.”
They asked each other more questions—why she hadn’t told her family about going back to school, what he’d done with the engagement ring he bought for the woman he dated after college, why he had chosen to pursue a career in art. They stopped when Safire looked up and saw that the sun was setting.
“We have to go,” she said. “I still have to finish dinner.”
“But I haven’t gotten to the most important questions,” Darien complained.
“You don’t have to ask everything tonight,” she said, getting up. “We can play again. Or you can just ask. I’ll be more open.”
Darien looked disappointed, but he conceded. He helped Safire pack up and drove them back to her apartment.
Safire deposited Darien at the dining table while she finished dinner. The salad was ready, but the ingredients needed to go into the pasta, which had cooled. She had cut up the cheddar and pepper jack into little cubes and was mixing it into the pasta along with a medley of vegetables she had already sautéed. Then it occurred to her.
“Do you eat cheese?” Safire called out.
“Not very often,” Darien answered.
Safire stopped. She couldn’t really get the cheese out now. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it felt as if she had just ruined dinner, and
it felt as if she was the most brainless person on earth. She knew it didn’t make sense, but she stood over the wooden bowl and started to cry.
She didn’t know that Darien had come in and that he was standing there watching her. What had come over her?
“Hey,” Darien said. He took her shoulders, turned her toward him and pulled her against his chest. “It’s okay. It’s just cheese. I do eat cheese sometimes, and I can pick it out if I don’t want it.”
Safire cried for a moment and then stepped back from Darien.
“I’m sorry. I’m not really domestic.”
“That’s okay. I don’t care about that. But tell me why? You can cook, right?”
Safire nodded.
“But you don’t,” he said. “Why?”
When the reason dawned on her, Safire’s face crumpled, and Darien pulled her into his arms again.
“I used to do stuff like this with my mother,” she said between her tears, “and she’s gone.”
Darien held Safire while she cried, but she didn’t let herself cry for very long.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You can feel whatever you feel around me.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
He held her chin and looked into her eyes. Then he kissed her. She kissed him back, wanting the comfort of his arms, his loving. His mouth opened over hers, and his tongue slipped between her lips. She held him closer and closer, running her breasts over his chest and wanting him.
She moved her hand between them. He wanted her, too.
“Make love to me, Darien,” she said.
In response, he lifted her and carried her into her bedroom.
His lips touched each part of her body that he undressed—her shoulder, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. When she stepped out of her panties, he knelt before her and parted her petals with his tongue, and then his hot mouth sucked her inside. A sublime torment spread through Safire’s center. She moaned and nearly lost her balance, but Darien’s hands anchored her hips.
Everything was different with this man.
She thought he would stop soon so that they could move to the bed, but he didn’t. He turned her body so that her back was against the nearest wall. Then his supple mouth clamped upon her rosebud once again, sending pangs of enchantment through her body. Safire hadn’t realized that she’d moved her hands up to her breasts until Darien’s hands joined hers, grating tenderly against the hard nipples and sending sensuous sparks throughout her body.
Her hips tilted involuntarily, bringing her wet flower more fully onto his searching mouth. Soon Safire’s body was ravished with sensation. She cried out Darien’s name and began to shake while the throes of exaltation ripped through her.
It was different than ever before.
The instant Darien rose, Safire’s hands were upon his clothes, pulling them from his body so that she could kiss his hard chest and feel his warm skin against hers. She pulled him to the bed and straddled his legs, feeling the fever building up within her again. Darien murmured as she rode above him. They tensed together and fell over the verge together, clinging to each other.
They held one another while they quieted.
It was different—more loving, more love.
Safire put on her robe and went to make them a tray with dinner. Darien had pasta and salad, and Safire had hers with a slice of ham. When they were finished, they held one another again. Safire knew one of the questions Darien hadn’t asked. He wanted to know how she felt about him. Right now, she felt so much that it scared her, because everything was different with this man.
Chapter 14
Darien had on casual clothes—orange jeans and an orange athletic crewneck pullover with a brown vest and his bronze-and-black sneakers. He had also told Safire to wear comfortable, casual clothes, and he couldn’t wait to see what her idea of “casual” clothing was.
She met him at his apartment early that Sunday, and when he let her in, she sprung into his arms, laughing. Without knowing why, he started laughing, too.
“Don’t you own a pair of sweatpants or jeans?” he asked.
“First off, we’re not working out. No sweatpants and sneakers for a date. And second off, my jeans aren’t practical. I can hardly bend in them.”
She was wearing orange capris and an orange peasant top made of a sheer fabric with a solid orange shell underneath. She had on one-and-a-half-inch strappy sandals in brown, and her hair was in a loose ponytail. She was simply beautiful.
“We look like orange pumpkins,” Safire said.
“It looks like we coordinated this.”
“How many colored jeans do you have?”
“Oh, don’t come for the colored jeans,” Darien said. “They’re my staple, like your skirt suits.”
“We are as different as we can be.”
Darien put his arms around Safire and kissed her. “That can be a good thing,” he whispered in her ear.
Safire murmured and wrapped her arms around Darien’s neck, grabbing a bunch of his braids in her fist. “I like it when you do that.”
“Oh, yeah? We better get a move on before you get ideas.”
“Are we really going to pick our own food? We should have brought Philly and Alex and Lawrence and...everybody.”
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right in those shoes?” Darien asked.
“Yes, these are comfortable.”
“Then we’re off.”
They got in his car and got on the road. “It’s a long ride,” Darien said, “so I have some music. And—” he reached into his satchel “—I brought the cards.”
Safire smiled. She seemed to be smiling at everything today.
“Okay,” she said. “But let’s start with the questions on the cards at first.”
“That might be a good idea,” Darien said. “I want to see your face when you answer my personal questions.”
Safire reached over and swatted him playfully. Darien caught her hand and kissed it, but she kept his hand, linking it with hers. As her fingers curled with his, Darien felt a warmth move into the pit of his stomach and had the feeling that everything was right between them. Safire pulled her hand back only to shuffle the deck of cards, pop a CD into the player and turn the volume down. As Smokey Robinson began to play, she found his hand again.
She had the deck on her lap, and she used her free hand to pick up the top card.
“This is for you. It says, ‘If you could star in any movie that’s already been made, which would you choose, and why?’ I like that question.”
“That, I don’t know. I would have to think about it more, but right now, I’m going to say it’s either Malcolm X, because that was one deep dude, and I would love to memorize some of his words, or Boomerang, because Eddie Murphy got to get next to Robin Givens and Halle Berry, and he chose the right one in the end. I know that’s lame, but that’s all I have.”
Safire had started laughing when Darien said Boomerang, and she hadn’t stopped.
“Okay,” Darien said. “Simmer down, kids.”
Darien withdrew his hand from Safire’s and reached over to tickle her ribs. She roared and then quieted down. “Boomerang,” she said as he collected her hand again.
“Okay, what’s my question for you?”
Safire pulled a card and read it. “‘If you could change something you did in the past—just one thing—what would that be, and why?’” She pouted. “Ugh. Why did I get the stupid one? Let’s see. I don’t know.”
Safire became thoughtful, and Darien thought he knew what she was thinking.
“You
can’t bring your parents back because you didn’t do anything to lose them.”
“I know. I can’t think of anything. Oh. I’ve got it. I wasn’t always there for my sister and brother, especially when I was in school. I would go back and decide to go to school from home to help out more.”
“If they needed you, wouldn’t they have called?”
“My sister’s not like that. She takes it all on.”
“I’ve been told that runs in the Lewis family.”
They played cards until they got to where they were going—connecting farms that let you pick your own produce.
“Over the summer,” Darien said, “we’ll definitely bring the wee little one, Philly. He can get all the stuff that grows close to the ground, like blueberries and strawberries.”
“What do they have now?”
“Lots of vegetables. Not so many fruits.”
“This place is huge,” Safire observed.
“Let me know if your feet get sore or tired,” Darien said, “so we can stop.”
“I can keep up. Don’t worry.”
They started on ladders with pears, clementines and lemons. In the end, they had walked and played for miles. They had gotten winter squash, sweet potatoes and kale, which were high on Darien’s list. They had also gotten kiwi and mandarins; these were just along the way. The last stop was the herbs, and Darien had a ball, all the more because Safire was there and seemed to be enjoying herself.
Darien still felt guilty. He shouldered the heavier parcels and tugged Safire’s hand. “Next time, you can pick what we do. We can even go clubbing. I know you like stuff like that more, and I know I like some oddball things.”
Safire stopped in front of Darien and touched his face and kissed him.
Captivated Love Page 14